Police officers and therapists are often at odds with each other. There are many reasons for this. For starters, members of both professions profess to have special, or even "secret" knowledge and understanding about human nature and deviant behavior. Each feels that their approach and the philosophy behind it are correct and the other's is wrong. I've been on both sides, as a therapist who had many cops as clients, and a reserve police officer, and heard the comments.

"Therapists are gullible, bleeding hearts, snobs, stuck-up, and worse,defense attorney's hired guns who may get criminals off." Many therapists tend to view the police as unsophisticated, authoritarian and lacking in empathy. So on the one hand you have the cops seeing the shrinks as ignorant stuffed shirts, and on the other you have the shrinks seeing the cops in the worst stereotypical fashion.

It's quite possible that prior to needing counseling, a police officer's only direct contact with a psychotherapist was in court, where they were testifying about how some defendant's so-called diminished capacity or deprived childhood excused his horrendous crime. (An aside: this is insulting to the vast majority of people with diminished capacity and bad childhoods who don't commit crimes.)

Many officer's experience with mental health professionals who are working in and around the criminal justice system lead them to think they want to "coddle criminals".

By and large, police are down-to-earth unpretentious folks who can't stand stuck-up jerks. I've known more than my share of flaky, money grubbing, yuppie, phony, naive shrinks; and I can see why many police officers would not want to open up and talk about their problems with them.

Is either "side" to blame for this us against them mentality?

First, the police. Well, a few of them do tend to be a bit too macho and hard nosed at times, and a few of them could be more tolerant, flexible and open-minded.

When it comes to the therapists, I've been shunned or ridiculed by mental health colleague for my activities as a reserve and special police officer. I know from personal experience that many do look down on the police. I've heard them talk about them in disparaging terms, and I've gotten wind of them talking about me behind my back the same way. At least my police friends made fun of me for being a shrink to my face.

Because many therapists are "control freaks" and may have been on the wrong end of a traffic stop, or had another encounter with the police where they felt in a subservient position, they may take other opportunities to flaunt their expertise and power over a police officer client. This is wrong and unprofessional; but it happens. There are those therapists who, if truth be told, figure police deserve all the stress they can get. This is especially exasperating when an officer has to suck up to them because they've been ordered to receive a "clean bill of health" from a shrink before they can go back to work.

Despite all of this, I do hope officers keep an open mind when they are dealing with mental health professionals. There are many therapists who devote their entire careers to helping crime victims, and who work aggressively with the police and prosecutors to make sure criminals get what's coming to them. And there are a handful of therapists with police experience themselves, some like me have been reserve officers and a few are retired fulltime officers who went back to school. Within departments there are (and should be more) stress officers or peer police counselors, who have had special training.

If an officer needs help they should shop for a police therapist. Ask if the therapist specializes in police stress and police counseling. Ideally they will find a therapist who, at the least, has worked with law enforcement personnel before, and ideally taken the time and effort to do some ride-alongs.

Officers usually want a therapist who is candid and not threatened by them, and especially one who talks. One of the most frequent complaints I hear about therapists from police is that "they just sat there and didn't say anything". In some ways the police can view a good therapist as their personal highly confiential mental health consultant, as someone who has "heard it all" and had many other officers turn to them successfully for help.

Email Hal Brown theeclecticdigest@gmail.com

I published a version of this in my website Police Stressline in 1997.